A student and a working teacher already have seats at the table of the Rhode Island Board of Education. They just can’t vote on any matters of importance.
But they could under a bill sponsored by Narragansett Democratic Sen. Alana DiMario heard Wednesday evening before the Senate Committee on Education. DiMario’s bill would grant voting privileges to Council on Elementary and Secondary Education’s ex officio members, the state’s Teacher of the Year and the head of the Student Advisory Council, which is composed of high school sophomores through seniors.
“They could come to the meetings, they could participate, but they weren’t truly decision makers,” DiMario said in a phone interview Wednesday afternoon.
Decisions by the commissioner of the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) are still subject to the approval by the eight-member Council on Elementary and Secondary Education. This K-12 council is part of the larger 17-member Board of Education, first established in 2014 to oversee all levels of education from kindergarten to university. Membership across both councils is determined by governor appointees.
The House version of the bill, led by Rep. David Morales, a Providence Democrat, was introduced on Feb. 28 but has yet to be scheduled for a hearing. DiMario’s bill was held for further study Wednesday by the Senate committee.
In her testimony, DiMario cited Article 12 of the Rhode Island State Constitution, which allows the General Assembly to “adopt all means which it may deem necessary and proper to secure to the people the advantages and opportunities of education.”
“I believe that allowing for the Teacher of the Year as well as the chair of the Student Advisory Council, to have full voting seats on that council will be a means to that end,” DiMario told her fellow senators on the committee.
This year’s bill layers together two previous legislative efforts. RIDE announces the state’s Teacher of the Year from the prior year’s batch of District Teachers of the Year, an honor determined by the district’s own teachers. The state’s top teacher was granted a voteless seat at the table in 2023, although the bill became law sans Gov. Dan McKee’s signature.
Sen. Valarie Lawson, an East Providence Democrat who is president of the National Education Association of Rhode Island, led the legislation for the student voting powers in recent years. But Lawson, who began her tenure as majority leader in January, has “a lot on her plate,” DiMario said. So this year Lawson and DiMario combined their efforts into the current bill, which features both women plus eight other Democrats as sponsors.
An overfull plate was also one of the reasons cited by RIDE in its public opposition to the bill at Wednesday’s hearing — a concern relayed from Gabriella Bautista Bolvito, the current chair of the Student Advisory Council and a senior at Classical High School in Providence. In her written testimony, Bolvito wrote about one of the first K-12 council meetings she attended, in which the council members were readying the fiscal 2026 budget.
They could come to the meetings, they could participate, but they weren’t truly decision makers.
“I knew little of what a budget entailed but was happy to be present in the conversation and to have the opportunity to give my input when necessary,” Bolvito wrote. “As a 17-year-old with only an intro level Macroeconomics course in my back pocket, the prospect of potentially having to vote on a matter as serious as RIDE’s budget is daunting. Although I hold several leadership positions. RIDE’s area of focus is still foreign to me.”
Bolvito did not attend the hearing, but quoting parts of her testimony in person for the Senate committee was Andy Andrade, special assistant to the commissioner for legislative relations at RIDE, who also argued that, rather than the power to contribute to K-12 council decisions, students would be better served by sitting on their local school boards.
“It seems
me that the best place for a student…would be to be a member of their local school committee, where they have a vested interest, where they know the issues, and they would be, I think, much more effective in that role,” Andrade said. “A commitment as a voting member would be challenging for any student with many responsibilities in and out of school.”
Sen. Tiara Mack, a Providence Democrat who has previously supported lowering the voting age, disagreed.
“I was a little disappointed to hear that one of our students didn’t feel like they were given the tools or empowerment to engage civically within our state at a variety of levels,” Mack said. “I think our young people are smart, and when given the proper tools, empowerment and resources, I believe they can engage in multimillion dollar decisions … and I think we should be giving our young people more opportunities to authentically engage in civics.”
Two people spoke up on behalf of the bill in person, while a packet of nine written submissions from members of Young Voices, a youth-led Providence nonprofit focused on empowering students of color in the state’s urban core, rallied in support of the bill.
“People constantly ask us to be involved civically, but then we lack the opportunity to do so,” Krissia Diaz, a Classical student, wrote in a testimony. “Give us the opportunity to have a real say as to what happens in our schools. . “We need to pass this bill, youth deserve to use their voice rather than have decisions made for them by officials who haven’t stepped foot in a school for more than fifteen years.”
It’s not unheard of for states’ boards of education to grant voting rights to student or teacher representatives. Massachusetts gives its student education board member voting rights, making it one of seven states that did so, according to 2022 data from the National Association of State Boards of Education. Some states have guardrails in place, like Maryland, which gives its student representative a say in the boardroom without being able to vote on personnel matters or certain appeals, according to state law.
As for teacher representatives, their governing powers on school councils also vary by state.
DiMario said the bill eliminates the need to identify and appoint new representatives for the student and teacher council seats, as they would be filled by existing office holders. The Teacher of the Year would sit on their council seat the year following their tenure as the state’s top teacher. DiMario’s bill would use the Senate, rather than the governor, to appoint the two new seats.
“I do expect that there could be some questions about that separation of powers issue,” DiMario said, adding that she’s not sure if the governor would support the legislation. A spokesperson for Gov. Dan McKee did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
“I think it’s a fundamental approach to policy, I believe very strongly in that whole idea of ‘Nothing about us, without us,’” DiMario said. “We can only make our best decisions about what is going to solve a problem when we talk to people that are closest to that problem. To me, this is just a piece of that.”
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
